150 YEARS AGO: Major general warns against retaliation for Lawrence Massacre

Thursday

Aug 29, 2013 at 12:01 AMAug 29, 2013 at 1:00 PM

Rudi Keller

FULTON — Maj. Lewis Miller brought his militia troops in for a rest “after a quite successful scout with the bushwhackers of the county,” the Missouri Telegraph reported.

Leading detachments from the 1st and 2nd Provisional Enrolled Missouri Militia regiments, Miller had executed three men, killed two in firefights and brought in three prisoners: John Booth, Manlius Suggett and Joseph Gilbert. They also had 11 horses, seven guns and $175 taken from one of the men executed, the newspaper reported.

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CALIFORNIA — Editor C.P. Anderson defended his political reputation in an editorial, asking his readers to demand facts from critics accusing him of being disloyal or favoring secession.

“Those few in this community … who denounce this as ‘a rebel,’ ‘secessionist,’ and etc., are informed that bare assertions are not facts — and particularly so in our case,” Anderson wrote.

In April 1861, Anderson had defended Gov. Claiborne Jackson when he defied President Abraham Lincoln’s first call for troops. And in May 1861, he wrote approvingly of the assembling Missouri State Guard after the Camp Jackson Affair in St. Louis. His offices were wrecked in July 1861 by Union troops. Since that date, he had been circumspect in his editorials.

Anderson had recently been acquitted of printing treasonable articles in a trial before a military commission. “We make the assertion without fear of successful contradiction that no man of any responsibility in this community can truthfully charge us with a single disloyal act against the government of the United States,” Anderson wrote.

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ST. LOUIS — If armed Kansans entered Missouri to retaliate for the Lawrence Massacre, they would be doing so in defiance of federal authority and would be opposed “by all the means in my power,” Maj. Gen. John Schofield wrote to Gov. Thomas Carney.

In a speech at Leavenworth, U.S. Sen. Jim Lane had called for armed men to meet Sept. 8 at Paola, Kan., to enforce the 15-day deadline in General Order No. 11. He called for a war of extermination against Missourians to provide a security zone for Kansas. General Order No. 11 directed all residents of Jackson, Cass, Bates and northern Vernon counties, outside designated areas, to leave the region.

“Be assured that nothing in my power shall be omitted to visit just vengeance upon all who are in any way guilty of the horrible crime, and to secure Kansas against anything of the kind in future; meanwhile let me urge upon you the importance of mollifying the just anger of your people, or rather of reconciling them to the necessity and propriety of leaving it to the United States troops to execute the vengeance which they so justly demand,” Schofield wrote.

Schofield promised arms for militia units to guard the border but urged Carney to keep them in Kansas.

The stated purpose of the gathering at Paola was to search for property stolen in the Lawrence raid. If they came to Missouri, the result would be “indiscriminate retaliation upon innocent and guilty alike,” Schofield wrote. “You cannot expect me to permit anything of this sort.”

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ST. LOUIS — The poverty and absurdity of the Missouri Confederate Government-in-Exile, the Daily Missouri Republican stated, was exhibited in papers captured with Brig. Gen. Jeff Thompson, former major of St. Joseph who had been seized near Pocahontas, Ark., while on a recruiting expedition.

One in particular made clear the condition of Gov. Thomas Reynolds’ administration. In the dispatch, Thompson was told that Reynolds requested him “to procure for his use, by purchase or otherwise,” a copy of the state statutes and laws passed since the last revision in 1855.

In another, Reynolds directed the creation of rolls for Missouri exiles to vote for members of the Confederate Congress.

Reynolds was elected lieutenant governor in 1860. He fled the state along with most of the elected government in 1861. He lived in Charleston, S.C., until claiming to be governor after the death of Gov. Claiborne Fox Jackson.

“The farce is nearly played out, that is, nevertheless, kept up with the gravity becoming the fearful tragedy of which is so irresistibly suggestive,” the Republican stated.

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